Make Your Own Birthday Cake!

A hoy-hoy and Happy New Year! And yes, I AM SERIOUS! Make your own birthday cake, if you want and you love to bake. I love to bake birthday cakes! Heck, I LOVE to eat birthday cakes! They are happy, non-pretentious, and delicious! They can be anything and decorated in any theme or style! Goth? Have an all black cake with red sprinkles! 80’s child? Make you a Rainbow Brite cake (that’s right, people: Rainbow Brite). Now, don’t laugh or roll your eyes, BUT, before a couple of years ago I had never thought to bake my own birthday cake. But Bridget, what happened a couple of years ago? We dropped cable, started watching Samsung TV, and I was introduced to Claire Saffitz (all hail the Claire – go ahead and whisper that part). Claire had mentioned that she makes her own birthday cakes and my mind was blown! I had never considered baking my own birthday cake! So last year, I decided I was going to make my own cake (mostly due to the fact that I have wanted to try out this recipe, LOL). 

What? No! Don’t be sad! I enjoy baking and trying new recipes! And yes, I have beautiful family and friends that have offered to make my cakes, but this is something (as I have stated many times) that I enjoy doing; not only for myself, but especially for others. Therefore, without further adieu, I will walk us through cakes, cakes, and more cakes, and then end with this year’s birthday cake! It is a Claire recipe and I am very excited to share this with you! When we get to that portion of the blog, I will provide a link to her exact recipe (there is also a video!!). 

Past Birthday Cakes

Cake. Most of us LOVE cake. What’s not to like about cake? First of all, there’s the tender, moist cake itself, which, if done right, can be eaten without frosting. But, who am I kidding? For most of us, the frosting is what we are here for: with its thick, rich, and creamy texture and luscious mouthfeel that has us coming back again and again. Vanilla, chocolate, and strawberry are just the tip of the flavor iceberg. But flavors are only the beginning, there is also a HUGE variety of frosting to be made and matched with your cake base: be it buttercream, whipped cream, cream cheese, Swiss meringue, and so on, and so on. When I go to either a birthday party or a wedding, my main focus is always the cake. The. Cake. Have I told you all how much I love cake?

Have I started baking my own cakes the last couple of years? Yes. Have I always done so? No. As a kid I had the handmade and store bought cakes with Rainbow Brite, She-Ra, and DuckTales. As I got older, we found and loved tort cakes: first the chocolate version with its rich, decadent cake layers in between the light mousse filling – a beautifully sinful combination for celebrating one’s birthday. Then I switched over to the strawberry tort. This had simple sweet and light sponge cake with whipped cream, lightly sweetened with fresh and bright strawberry filling. In January, it was a very nice reminder of summer. My mom would get them for me from the store every year. I have also had lovely homemade cakes that my mother-in-law would make me: wacky cake (my favorite), pistachio cake (also a cherished favorite), wacky cake… yes, I know I already listed this: I love wacky cake and I think would ask her for it every year. LOL. 

But enough about my cakes! 

Cakes for Others

Cake is a symbol of celebration, typically for a happy occasion. Birthday cakes symbolize one more year on this planet. The tender, moist cake represents the foundations of our lives: our friends and family. The silky and luscious frosting are those things we include in our lives that make it a life: our hobbies, the things and activities we enjoy. In all, cake embodies our laughter, our struggles, and our triumphs all wrapped up, decorated, ready to cut and share with our loved ones. Can you eat cake while being sad? You bet. But to me, most cake is best eaten in joy and celebration. Did you like my philosophical take on cake?! LOL. I’ll stop, promise. Back to your regularly scheduled blog… 

The first bona fide birthday cake I made was for our friend’s son who was turning one. I baked two 9×13 cakes, put them together and decorated them to look like the Candy Land game board. I wish I had a picture to show you, but unfortunately, I lost most of our pictures when our jump drive died (yeah, we didn’t know that could happen either). The Candy Land cake had every imaginable candy on it and was quite the showstopper! Lynn and I were very proud of ourselves. Throughout the years, I have made many birthday cakes for others. I have to tell you that my FAVORITE, FAVORITE cake is a vanilla cake with vanilla frosting. That’s right: vanilla. Don’t knock it until you have tried a really good vanilla cake! There is a certain boujee grocery store that sells cake by the slice, and honestly, their vanilla cake is so good, I could eat it without frosting, seriously. It’s that good. 

Am I going to turn down any other cake? Heck no! But I enjoy the delicate and simple taste of the vanilla, it is just a pure taste of the ingredients you put into the cake: the rich butter, the sweet and deep flavor of a good vanilla, and the creaminess of the dairy that you mix into the batter. But. Then there is chocolate cake. Done wrong can be dry and fake tasting. Done right, wow, moist, complex with the deep and dark notes of the chocolate, emphasized by coffee and yes, vanilla. Salt is also a great addition and further brings out the sweet yet beautiful bitterness of the chocolate. It’s like eating sin on a fork. It’s wonderful; and paired with either a chocolate mousse frosting or a salty, creamy peanut butter frosting is simply the cherry on top! HAHAHAHAHA!! See what I did there?! Sigh, yeah, sorry. 

Anyhoo, the cakes that I have done for others include chocolate cake with peanut frosting, strawberry cake with bright pink whipped cream cheese frosting, chocolate wacky cake with tart cherry filling and ermine frosting (AKA the Disneyland Haunted Mansion Wedding Cake), and vanilla and chocolate drip cake. As stated before, last year I decided to bake my own birthday cake, which was a Claire recipe. I know, I know. Hey, I’m sure all of you get on your kicks too, so I don’t wanna hear it. Also, look at all of the tastiness you’ve got to read about (and if you are my friends and family, taste)!! Last year’s cake was a simple Birthday Cake: yellow cake with chocolate cream cheese frosting, simply decorated with pastel sprinkles in pinks, yellows, and oranges. Everyone loved it, I felt that the cake was a little dry. I’m not a big fan of yellow cake, but I figured I would give it a try. Calliope really enjoyed it. No, we do not willingly give our dogs chocolate. Last year, on December 27, Calliope entered our lives and everyone got to meet her at my birthday party. A day or two later, The Husband and I went out to get her stuff and we put her in Moose’s old kennel. Weeeelllll, apparently no such flimsy devices could contain The Pibble. However, the only mischief she got into was to jump on the table and eat the last piece of birthday cake! LOL. PS – we don’t kennel her anymore, she is a free-range Pibble. 

2024 Birthday Cake – The Uber Chocolate Cake

THIS year! This year, I made what I will be referring to as The Uber Chocolate Cake. I was watching YouTube again and this came up (yes, it is, in fact, another Claire recipe). While watching her make it, I couldn’t get over how soft and tender the cake was and the frosting! The FROSTING! She made a rich, thick chocolate pudding first, then placed that into a mixer and made a type of Swiss Meringue Buttercream by adding the butter into the pudding base! I had never seen anything like that and knew, three months prior to my birthday, that I needed to make this cake! Before we get into how I made it, as promised, here is the link to the video.  

Bridget Versions: I do have awesome and favorite versions of a chocolate cake and chocolate frosting. In fact, both are pretty darn tootin’ amazing recipes, but I really wanted to try this new recipe. What are my versions? The cake is the chocolate wacky cake that is featured here in the Haunted Mansion Wedding Cake, my chocolate frosting is whipped buttercream that is so light and delicate, I swear it is like eating mousse! My friend is gluten free, so I made this frosting for her and she did, in fact, eat it with a spoon! Hahaha. Anyhoo, both are very, very good recipes, but, as stated, I am most interested and excited to make this new uber chocolate cake! 

Uber Chocolate. Chocolatey Cake

This cake has chocolate in one form: cocoa powder. However, the manner in which you treat the cocoa powder is what lends its super chocolate flavor power to the overall chocolate experience! But, we will get to the momentarily. I need to talk to you about how this cake is prepared. For most cakes, one would typically use the creaming method in where you cream your sugar into your butter, then add your dry and wet ingredients alternately beginning and ending with the dry ingredients. This produces a thick and creamy batter. THIS CAKE, however, uses the reverse creaming method. For this method, you start with the dry ingredients (plus the sugar) in the mixing bowl. Then you have three different add-ins: the bloomed cocoa powder in coffee with sour cream and vanilla, the veggie oil, and the beaten eggs. 

NOTE: Errrrr, the what cocoa powder in the huh coffee? Okay. Remember how I told you that it was the manner in which you treated the cocoa powder that allows to become its most transformed chocolatey self? Well, this is it. Take hot coffee, freshly brewed. Now, I am super lucky and have a pretentious coffee snob of a husband, get him to make you your coffee in whatever style he uses to make his pretentious cups of coffee each morning. (HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAA). He is sitting here next to me, complaining about this section of the blog. LOL. Anyhoo, I am obviously not a coffee person, so, either get someone who makes their own or go to Starbucks (I know, I know) and get a small, black coffee. Pour this over the cocoa powder and stir. This hydrates the cocoa powder and allows it to infuse with the liquid – you will notice a chocolate explosion of smells! This is the cocoa powder blooming and in a way “roasting” in the hot coffee. Roasting? 

EDITORS NOTE:  Enjoying a properly made cup of coffee is not snobbish, nor is the aforementioned Husband a snob, he is a sweet, caring, hardworking man, who likes good coffee.  Thank you

In Mexican cuisine, they will take their spices and roast them in a hot pan before using them: the action of placing your spices on a hot surface, allows the spices to release their oils and/or flavors. When you pour the hot coffee over the cocoa powder, you are basically doing the same thing and allowing the cocoa to level up to its best version! For your cake! LOL. Kind of like Popeye and his spinach! 

Then add sour cream and vanilla into the coffee/cocoa mixture and set aside. When you are ready, start your mixer and with the paddle attachment, first add your veggie oil and half of the chocolate mixture. Combine until the mixture looks like this:

Scrape down the sides and the bottom of the bowl. Then add your remaining chocolate and the beaten eggs and mix for about one minute. The mixture will thin out – make sure to scrape down the sides and the bottom again and mix until the batter in combined (will resemble pancake batter, thin or pourable). This might sound intense, but, for the most even cake layers, measure out your batter among your pans into 550 grams of batter per pan. Bake. 

Mega Chocolate Pudding-Based Frosting!!  

This frosting is similar to Swiss Meringue, but instead of a meringue base that butter is whipped into, it is a pudding base. A double chocolate pudding base. Cocoa powder and chopped semisweet chocolate. I feel like when it comes to super chocolatey things, balance is the way to go, especially as us humans age and don’t care as much for the cloyingly sweet sweet things. The key to this pudding is having everything at the ready: chop up your chocolate and put it in a bigger bowl as you will be stirring things later. Get the milk and half of the sugar in a pan and warm it up until the sugar is dissolved: set aside. Then get your dry ingredients (plus the other half of the sugar) in another bowl. 

Now, I added my yolks to the dry and mixed them by hand like Claire had said: I am telling you, I would either employ the use of your stand mixer or a hand mixer. My arm was killing me when done and there is a lot more stirring that occurs. Once the mixture thins out, add half of your warm milk and sugar mixture (note: I used a measuring cup to do this so I don’t get milk everywhere). Stir constantly. You are tempering the eggs in the dry mixture so that you don’t shock the eggs and cook them. Slowly pouring in part of the hot mixture slowly brings the eggs up to temp without cooking them. Now you can safely put this mixture back into the pot with the rest of the milk and over low-medium to medium, cook and stir your pudding until thick and it bubbles – your flour has been activated. Pour the hot pudding over the chopped chocolate and let sit for 5 minutes. Once 5 minutes is up, stir to combine. Now, Claire did this in her stand mixer to incorporate and to cool down. As I was not making the frosting yet, I stirred this by hand and left it, covered in the bowl to cool to room temp. Just like the Ermine frosting, I did not refrigerate. This needs to be kept at room temp in order for the butter to be incorporated correctly – just trust me on this. 

Once you are ready to make the frosting, place the pudding in the bowl of you stand mixer. Begin to mix the pudding with the paddle attachment. Slowly add your butter to the pudding base. Then add your vanilla (I used vanilla paste – we are getting fancy here for my birthday, after all). Mix that in. Note: If you let your pudding set overnight, it will take a bit for the pudding to completely incorporate with the frosting as you are adding the butter. That’s okay. Stop it periodically and scrape down the sides and then beat the tar out of it. It will come together like mine did. Frost as normal. For my cake, I went very simple. I didn’t even add sprinkles as I usually do. I just added some cocoa powder on the top and added my gold cake topper! Done! 

Taste!

Did I mention that this cake was The Uber Chocolate Chocolately Cake? Well. It is. Uber Chocolate. Cake. I am going to attempt to describe this cake to you, but I already know it will fall short. All I can tell you to is to please use the link and try this cake!! My friend, Rachel said from now on, if she asks me for chocolate frosting, she wants this one. LOL. The cake itself is rich and decadent. It has such a deep, complex flavor of not only the cocoa powder, but the coffee and the vanilla that all play so nicely with one another in a kind of chocolate cake tango. Interweaving with one another in ribbons of chocolate and eggs and milk. I will make a note to cut this cake into small slices – this is rich. Next, is the frosting. Oh, the frosting! Again, great chocolate flavor that is lighter tasting than the cake’s due to the butter’s part in this portion of the cake. And because it is like a Swiss Meringue, it is light, creamy, and almost like a chocolatey butter cloud on your tongue. Neither the cake nor the frosting are overly sweet, so your tongue gets to enjoy all of those deep, dark, complex chocolate flavors. It is devine!! Please try this cake! It is our families new favorite! (Just remember to cut small slices, for real, you might hurt yourself, it is so rich).

Conclusion

Well, I hope you enjoyed this blog on cakes, cakes, and more cakes. I truly enjoyed enrapturing you with my love of cakes and the different types of cake that the world has to offer you! Thank you for reading and Happy New Year (and Happy Birthday to me – LOL)!!! See you next time!